Courses: Fall 2009
History of Science 201: The Origins of Scientific Thought
(meets with ILS 201)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 1:00-2:15 TR, 6210 Social Science; 2 lectures and 1 discussion section per week. See also the parallel course, Integrated Liberal Studies 201, which bestows natural science credit at the introductory level. Prerequisites: none; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
This course is the first in a sequence of courses that examines the development of science in cultural and intellectual context from antiquity to the twentieth century. The class begins with an examination of perspectives towards the natural world in the poetry, philosophy, and medicine of ancient Greece. It follows the movement of the classical tradition into medieval Islam and Christendom, and concludes with the transformation of European science during the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout our investigation of what 'science' has been in the past, we will pay particular attention to issues that still have relevance today, such as the interaction between science and religion, the importance of different institutional settings for science, and the relationship between science and government.
Grading will include frequent quizzes in discussion sections and essay exams.
History of Science 203: Science in the Twentieth Century: A Historical Overview
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary); 1:20 MW, 5231 Social Science; 2 hrs. lecture and 1 hr. discussion. Prerequisites: None; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Richard Staley
This course surveys the history of science in the twentieth century, from the discovery of x-rays and radioactivity in the 1890s to the complex of scientific and social questions raised by the human genome project and stem cell research in the present day. This period saw spectacular transformations in the reach of modern science and technology, accompanied by the increasing specialization and fragmentation of knowledge. Here we explore the changing dimensions of science in an age of unprecedented promise and conflict. Tracing the evolution of physics and biology and exploring the emergence of environmentalism through the course of the century, we examine major conceptual developments, the interaction of science and society, and the impact of war on science and technology. Course requirements include three take-home essays and class participation, with some informal writing for discussion sections.
History of Science 218: History of Twentieth Century American Medicine
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; S (Social Science), E (Elementary); 11:00-12:15 TR, 2167 Grainger; Prerequisites: None; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Susan Lederer
In March, 2009 President Barack Obama called for an ambitious reform of American health care. This time, he insisted, "the call for reform is coming from the bottom up, from all across the spectrum from doctors, nurses and patients; unions and businesses; hospitals, healthcare providers and community groups. This time, there is no debate about whether all Americans should have quality, affordable healthcare, the only question is, how?" This course addresses the question of how the United States developed its current health care system. In so doing, the course will focus on the changes in medical care and medical science over the course of the twentieth century, as well as the changing face of the medical profession and the institutions which deliver health care. Topics include advances in medical technology and therapy, the debate over national health insurance, the cultural authority of the medical profession, and media representations of doctors, nurses, patients and hospitals.
History of Science 230: Agriculture and Social Change in Western History
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary); 9:30-10:45 TR, 10 Ag Hall; Prerequisites: Open to freshmen.
Instructor: Jess Gilbert
Agricultural practices and social history from prehistoric times to the present. Topics include origins of agriculture, feudalism, agriculture in the Industrial Revolution, farming in America, and the consequences of the Green Revolution.
History of Science 280: Honors Seminar: Studies in Science, Technology, and Medicine
Topic: Science and Exploration
3 cr.; I (Intermediate), H (Humanities), satisfies Communications Requirement Part B; 1:20-3:15 W; 4308 Social Science. Prerequisites: Communications Requirement Part A must be satisfied. Open to non-honors students with consent of instructor; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
From the Columbian voyages to lunar voyages, from the literature of discovery to literature about discovery, early modern European explorations of various 'new worlds' served as an important arena for revisiting existing concepts of both the natural and the moral spheres. This honors course focuses on how European concepts of nature colored - and were themselves colored by - early modern European exploration of the globe during the two centuries or so following Christopher Columbus' 'discovery' of the New World. Readings may include European encounters with Brazilian cannibals or Chinese mandarins; debates over the curative powers of tobacco, tea, and coffee; navigational and cartographical techniques; and the impact of European exploration on natural histories, cabinets of curiosity, and other scientific enterprises in the period. Assignments will include weekly exercises in analyzing a variety of historical sources, in-class presentations, and a 10-15 page research paper.
History of Science 322: Ancient and Medieval Science
(crosslisted with Medieval Studies)
3 cr.; 2 lectures and 1 discussion per week. H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 8:50 MWF, 4308 Social Science; Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor; Grads must register concurrently in Hist Sci 622.
Instructor: Michael H. Shank
This course explores the inquiry into nature from the Ancient Near-East to 1500 in its intellectual, social, institutional, and cultural contexts, and its relations to various political and religious institutions. Chronologically and geographically, the course extends from the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, through Greece and Rome, to the civilizations of Islam and Latin Christendom. It will illustrate the transformation of knowledge as individuals, texts, artifacts, and techniques travel. The course surveys the development and growing systematization of the mathematical sciences (with a special focus on astronomy/astrology), medicine, and natural philosophy with some attention to such related enterprises as philosophy, theology, and technology.
History of Science 337: History of Technology
3 cr.; (H) Humanities, A (Advanced); 11:00-12:15 TR, 4308 Social Science; Prerequisites : junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This course seeks to understand the place of technology in the history of the West over roughly 1000 years ending in 1950, from the medieval cathedral to the atomic bomb. The course does not examine technology in isolation, but rather in connection with economics, politics, labor, and culture. The course makes no attempt at comprehensive coverage, but rather examines technology through a series of topics, including the nature of medieval technology, the technological basis for Western expansion, the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the United States as a technological power. Along the way we will learn a bit about clocks and cannons, spinning wheels and steam engines, electric lights and atomic bombs.
Two main themes run through the chronological narrative of the course. First is the role of organized violence in the rise of Western technology, mainly in the form of military power and coerced labor (i.e., slavery). The second theme concerns the relationship between symbolic and utilitarian motives in the development of technology, that is, the between technologies as expressions of cultural values (such as Gothic cathedrals) and technologies as means to practical ends (like farming).
The main requirements of this course are 3 short readings responses, two take-home midterms, a take-home final, and participation in discussion. Graduate students are required to register concurrently for Hist Sci 637.
History of Science 350: Science on the Eve of Darwin's Origin of Species
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-5:00 M; 984 Memorial Library. Prerequisites: sophomore Honors or junior standing.
Instructor: Robin Rider
Seminar-style course in which students will contribute to a library exhibit by selecting, describing, and assessing the importance of scientific research and popularizations of the 1850s. The exhibit, entitled "Science Circa 1859: On the Eve of Darwin's Origin of Species," will showcase holdings of campus libraries and honor the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's book. Students will have the opportunity to help plan and install the exhibit and write exhibit text. The exhibit will be installed in the Department of Special Collections in late fall 2009, supplemented by an online version. Background readings, discussions, and scheduled bibliographies and drafts will help students to focus on critical issues and relevant source materials and to produce well-researched and well-written exhibit texts. Enrollment limited to 20 students.
History of Science 504: Society and Health Care in American History
(crosslisted with Med Hist and History)
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); 11:00-12:15 MW, 1010 Medical Science Center; Prerequisites: junior standing AND consent of instructor.
Instructor: Ronald Numbers
Lecture-Seminar. Health care in America since the colonial period; emphasis on social developments.
History of Medicine 507: Health, Disease and Healing I
(crosslisted with History and Med Hist)
3 cr., H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 2:30-3:45 MW, 1510 MSB; Prerequisites: junior standing
Instructor: Walton Schalick
This course presents an in-depth survey of medicine and public health from its roots in Antiquity through approximately 1500. There are three principal themes. The first focuses on the evolving concepts of illness, beginning with the ideas of the Hippocratics, who lived during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. We will study how their ideas were taken up and transformed by later scholars, with particular emphasis being paid to medicine in medieval Islam and the reception of medical knowledge in western Europe after 500 A.D. through its transformation in the newfangled universities. We will also pay close attention to the teaching and practice of anatomy in those universities.
The second theme studies the medical practitioners of this era, focusing primarily on physicians but also paying significant attention to surgeons, apothecaries, female healers and the various other health-providers who together comprised the practice of healing in the ancient and medieval worlds. Within that theme, the notion of the medieval medical marketplace will be an important one. The third theme centers on the evolution of health as a social and political problem. It includes the emergence of hospitals in Constantinople and Baghdad, two large medieval cities where caring for the sick poor became a matter of pressing concern and the evolution of public health through the period of the Black Death in the later fourteenth century and beyond.
Each week there will be one 75-minute lecture on Monday to introduce the week's subject, followed by a 75- minute seminar/lecture on Wednesday to flesh out the readings in depth. Depending on the complexity of the material, readings for the seminar meeting will be about 100 pages per week. Readings depend primarily on a digitized packet of material, but we will also have recourse to two textbooks: Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine by Nancy Siraisi, and Carole Rawcliffe's Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England.
Written work will consist of 2-3 take-home essay assignments, ranging from of 5-15 pages in length.
History of Science 509: The Development of Public Health in America
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate);1:00-2:15 TR; 1010 Med Sci Center. Prerequisites: junior standing AND consent of instructor.
Instructor: Judith Leavitt
This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation.
History of Science 512: Galileo Galilei: Life, Writings, and Interpretations
3 cr.; A (Advanced); 9:30-10:45 TR; 6102 Social Science. Prerequisites: sophomore Honors or junior standing.
Instructor: Michael Shank
In both the popular imagination and the history of science, Galileo Galilei casts a shadow of almost mythic proportions in accounts of science and religion, as well as the history of physics and astronomy. Interpretations of his achievement and its context thus span an extraordinary range. The course offers an introduction to his writings with emphasis on his context (Pisa, Padua, Florence, Rome), and to the many interpretations of both his scientific work and his trial. The course format combines lecture and discussion.
Readings are likely to include much of Galileo's Dialogue on the two Chief World Systems; Drake, ed., Opinions and Discoveries of Galileo; Finocchiaro, ed., The Galileo Affair; Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible; a course reader.
History of Science 524: The Medical History of Sex and Sexuality
(crosslisted with Women's St and Med Hist)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 11:00-12:15 TR, 115 Ingraham; Prerequisites: previous history (including Med Hist and Hist Sci) course preferred.
Instructor: Judith Houck
What causes homosexuality? Can frigidity in women best be cured by a pill, an analyst's couch, or sweeping social change? Are sexual psychopaths sick or criminal? What determines a person's sex? Are there therapeutic uses for sex toys?
Over the course of the twentieth century, medicine and biomedical science have become increasingly influential in the social and cultural lives of Americans. This course looks at the changing place of medicine in our public and private sexual lives. We will be guided by five particular questions: How has medicine (and scientific authority) helped to define and control appropriate sexual behavior? How has medicine become involved in the definition and creation of sex? What do medical interventions reveal about social and cultural ideas of sex and sexuality? How do campaigns against sexual disease illuminate cultural judgments about social groups? How do boundaries defining appropriate sexual behavior also define appropriate sex/gender roles?
History of Science 561: Greek and Roman Medicine and Pharmacy
(crosslisted with Classics, Med Hist, History & S&A Phm)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D ( Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 TR; 3345 Engr Hall. Prerequisites: junior or senior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: John Scarborough
Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C.-A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine.
History of Science 622: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Science
1 cr.; A (Advanced); 9:55 F, 6105 Social Science; Prerequisites: grad standing; concurrent registration in Hist Sci 322 or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Michael Shank
Discussion of advanced readings in the primary and secondary literature on the history of ancient and medieval science, with emphasis on current historiographic issues. Open only to graduate students. This course must be taken by graduate students concurrently with History of Science 322. One meeting per week.
Requirements (for the 4 credits in HS 622 and the concurrent HS 322): active engagement with the material and participation in discussion and review report (25%); three reviews (ca. 5 pages each) of three additional books (not fewer than 600 pages total) that are new to the student and that go into depth on some aspect of the course (15% each); oral presentation of one review; one take-home, 8-10-page synthetic final essay (30%). The readings listed on the syllabus under "Grad supplement " are required of grad students.
History of Science 637: Studies in History of Technology
1 cr.; A (Advanced); 4:00 R, 6304 Social Science; Prerequisites: grad standing; concurrent registration in Hist Sci 337.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This one-credit graduate course meets concurrently with History of Science 337, History of Technology, and provides a separate graduate discussion section. The course is designed to deal with historiography and conceptual issues at a greater level of sophistication than in the undergraduate course. Requirements include additional short readings for each week, as well as modest (12 to 15-page) research paper.
History of Science 668:Health and Citizenship
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; A (Advanced); 1:00-3:30 T; 3349 Engr Hall. Prerequisite: junior standing.
Instructor: Richard Keller
This seminar explores the relationship between health and citizenship. Among its key themes are the following questions: When did the link between health and human rights first emerge? How has it developed historically? What factors define citizenship? To what extent does physical and mental health constitute a gauge of enfranchisement and of one's access to power in the modern state? In what ways does the de facto absence of citizenship-in cases like those migrant laborers, ethnic minorities, and colonial subject populations-delimit the possibility of a human right to health? How have structural health inequities historically posed significant threats to global security? Such questions have been central to studies of the political economy of health and disease, anthropology, and area studies, but have been less apparent in historical research. This seminar, limited to fifteen students, offers a key means for integrating these questions into an interdisciplinary approach to global health.
The course will focus primarily on the development of the relationship between health and citizenship in modern Europe beginning with the French Revolution and through the rise of the welfare state before exploring the implications of ideas about health and human rights in a global context.
History of Science 720: Proseminar: Historiography and Methods
3 cr.; 2:30-5:00 W; 7130 Social Science. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.
Instructor: Richard Staley
This seminar is designed to orient first-year graduate students in the Department of the History of Science to work in the field. It offers a sampling of classic and current work in the historiography of science _ broadly understood to include technology and medicine. Graduate students in other departments who are interested in exploring the field, or in completing a minor in either History of Science or Science and Technology Studies are also welcome. Our readings will help students gain perspective on important features of the historical development of the sciences, while exploring styles of historical writing, the use of evidence, research methods, and ethical, legal and professional issues. The seminar will be reading and discussion intensive, and assignments will include issue papers, leadership in discussion, book reviews, and a historiographical paper.
History of Science 907: Seminar
Keywords in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
3 cr.; 2:30-5:00 F, 6109 Social Science; Prerequisites: graduate standing
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This research and reading seminar focuses on the history of concepts in technology, medicine, the natural sciences and the social sciences.
Raymond Williams wrote his pathbreaking Keywords over 30 years ago. Yet many fundamental terms in science, technology, medicine and related fields still await detailed historical scrutiny, while presentist assumptions about the meanings of terms continue to impede understanding. Now that historians have moved beyond some of the excessive claims of the linguistic turn, the time is ripe for a sober assessment (or reassessment) of key concepts, an assessment grounded in the relationship between concepts, institutions, and material practices. Furthermore, the development of new research tools, most importantly full-text databases, makes some aspects of research into the history of concepts dramatically easier, while posing new dangers of misinterpretation.
The seminar will begin with historiography and theory of the history of concepts, including traditional approaches to the history of ideas (Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being), the Cambridge School of intellectual history (Pocock and Skinner), German Begriffsgeschichte (history of concepts), and some Raymond Williams. We'll then examine a few exemplary works in history of science, technology and medicine, even though many of these works were not conceived by their authors as histories of concepts. Possible readings include classic works like Ludwik Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, as well as more recent research on specific concepts, such as Alexander's book on efficiency and my own work on the concept of technology.
Each seminar participant will choose a particular concept or set of concepts as the focus of a research paper. Significant class time will be devoted to teaching research methods for producing the paper. Topics can be in any field of science, technology or medicine, construed broadly, and in any period, although some knowledge of the original languages of relevant sources is essential.
History of Science 950: History of Science Colloquium
0-1 cr.; A (Advanced); 4:00 -5:30 T, 6102 Social Science; Prerequisites: History of Science major; graduate standing.
Instructor: Richard Staley
Intended for graduate majors in the history of science, this requires regular attendance at History of Science colloquia, averaging 4 or 5 per semester. May be taken for 1 credit or 0 credits. Required of first and second semester graduate students in History of Science.